Alastair White of Mallusk-based pharmaceutical packaging company Chesapeake and Sharon Griffiths of it assist were among the main winners at the annual Centre for Competitiveness (CforC) Excellence awards.
Chesapeake, which employs 180 people in Northern Ireland, was the top placed Northern Ireland private sector organisation, winning a Four star Excellence award. And it assist, which provides it systems to the Northern Ireland Civil service, collected the Ireland Excellence award, the pinnacle of the scheme, alongside three other organisations - mental health charity Niamh, the Cedar Foundation, and Kare, a not-for-profit organisation which provides services and support to people who have an intellectual disability and their families. The event, celebrating its 20th year, is run in conjunction with invest Ni and supported by the Department of Finance and Personnel, NiE, and Hewlett Packard. There are various levels of recognition throughout the improvement process, including the EFQM Ireland Excellence award, the pinnacle of the highly-regarded recognition scheme and this year 20 organisations won awards, including 11 from Northern Ireland.
CforC chief executive Bob Barbour said: "this is a landmark occasion as we celebrate our 20th year of these awards to celebrate excellence across the public, private and voluntary sectors, all based on the EFQM world class benchmarking model measuring performance outcomes across all parts of the organisation.
"in that time, it has become even more important that organisations passionately pursue quality excellence to become leaner, more profitable, more sustainable and therefore more competitive.
"Our winners have undergone rigorous examination and have illustrated their employees' dedication, low absenteeism, higher productivity, customer satisfaction and superior financial performance."
Established by the private sector, the CforC (www.cforc.org) is an independent not-for-profit membership organisation dedicated to actively supporting the development of an internationally competitive economy through innovation, productivity improvement and quality excellence in the private, public and voluntary sectors. Since 1991 more than 30,000 European organisations - including many in Northern Ireland - have used the EFQM Model as their blueprint and driver of competitiveness.